I cook and I write for all the Palestinians denied their right to go home!

Palestinian SpicesMakloubeh - Palestinian FoodPalestinian Meal with SpicesGrowing up
My father’s poems
Ran through my veins
Like blood
A necessary life ingredient
A rhythm that kept my heart pumping
Growing up
My mother’s cooking
Warmed my soul
Her spices
Penetrated every fibre of my being
My Palestinian identity
Shaped
By food and poetry
By a feast of will and hope
By an assortment of words
Carefully arranged
On our kitchen table
And succulent flavors
That lingered in our heart
But of late
My father’s poems
Seem to come out broken
Fatigue crept into the mind
Of a man who waited for too long
Of late
The aroma of my mother’s spices
No longer lingers in the air
A sense of aging
A touch of despair
Like many of their generation
Time is running out
And they are still trapped
In the physical distance
Too far away from home
Strangers to the ground
On which they tread
I look beneath my feet
I too stand
In a vast land
Of aspirations not fulfilled
Dreams not accomplished
Desires relentless
Unforgotten
Sometimes
I am confronted
By the deplorable display of inhumanity
That has forced millions away from home
And kept them from returning
I hold on to my identity
I write poetry
And pray its rhythm
Will keep my children’s hearts pumping
I bring out the spices
And carefully measure my cumin
My cardamom
My sumac and cinnamon
I want to fill the air
With a defiant aroma
That will nourish my children’s soul
And remind them where we come from
I write and I cook laboriously
with resolve
I create a Palestinian feast
Of delicious verses
for all the parents
who have waited for too long
I write and I cook
I hope my pen doesn’t dry out
And my spices linger
For a while longer
Until I satisfy my hunger
For justice
I tell my children we must be patient
My generation has yielded revolutions
But revolutions take generations to yield
So let me teach you how to write and cook
How to live and hope
For a future
Where Palestinians will no longer wait
For freedom
Justice
And their simple right to return home!

by Samah Sabawi
[published with permission]

Samah is a Palestinian writer, playwright and Public Relations expert with years of experience both as an activist for human rights as well as a political analyst. She is a Policy Advisor at Al-Shabaka. Presently living in Australia, Samah awaits the end of Israel’s denial of her right to return to Palestine.

Photos of Palestinian food and spices courtesy of Palestine Food [published with permission].

Related Links

Samah Sabawi spoke at the Israeli Apartheid Week in Sydney – here’s her full paper on normalisation.

“We have said it loud and clear: We will not co-exist with you in your world of inequality. If you want to co-exist with us, you are welcome to join us in our struggle for freedom, because right now, this is the only place where we exist!”

Revolutionary Rhymes

Palestinian-American performance poet and activist Remi Kanazi reciting his poem “Revolution” for Revolutionary Rhymes in London.

In memory of Mustafa Tamimi.

Related Links

Anti-apartheidist and supporter of Palestinian rights Archbishop Desmond Tutu supports the Occupy movement. ‘In a letter to OWS, Tutu describes Trinity Church, on Wall Street, as an “esteemed and valued old friend” but said it caused him pain to hear of the impasse in negotiations between OWS and the church over the site.’

Rafeef Ziadah – “Shades of Anger”

Rafeef Ziadah in London on the 12th November, 2011.

“You tell me I send my children out to die,
But those are your copters, your F-16s in our skies.”

Samah Sabawi will be presenting at the Labor Fringe in Sydney on the 3rd December 12.45pm to 2pm at Darling Harbour – make sure you are there to support if you can!

Related Links

Israel’s vile blockade on Gaza affects the sick – the most vulnerable people – in terrible ways.
Bruce Springsteen: Working on a Dream for justice, not apartheid
Ana Moura: Please Don’t Sing for Apartheid
Palestinian citizens of Israel and Jewish Israelis protest the death of public housing
In Historic Move, Iceland Becomes the First Western European Nation to Recognize Palestinian Statehood
‘In a meeting Monday night of the NUS’ National Executive Council (NEC), a motion demanding the “immediate end” of KCL’s research project with Ahava was passed with no votes against.

The NEC motion, noting the “overwhelming” international position on the illegality of Israeli settlements, states that “by collaborating with Ahava, King’s itself has become complicit with violations of international law”.’

Witnesses in Bassem Tamimi’s Trial: We were Instructed by Interrogators to Incriminate Him
AIUK : USA only country in world to sentence child offenders to life in prison without parole
Solidarity, Renewal, and Struggle: Revolution Until Liberation
PACBI-Arch Enemy: Stand with Revolution not Apartheid

Occupy Links

Egypt rights group goes after gov’t over US tear gas imports
Robert Fisk: A glimpse of real democracy – but it may prove too good to be true
Election updates in Egypt
A Voter’s Lament – By Mohamed El Dahshan

Australia Links

Australia lowest among OECD disability rankings :

Shame on Australia, and shame on Julia Gillard : ‘The report, Disability Expectations: Investing in a better life, a stronger Australia, found that 45 per cent of people with a disability in Australia live in or near poverty, the worst out of OECD countries, where the average is 22 per cent.’

Poetry for a Revolution

No time to blog at present, annoyingly, so here’s a poem by Rafeef Ziadah “We Teach Life, Sir” which is receiving deserved accolades round the globe. Rafeef’s thoughts contrast with the colonising of the Occupy Wall Street movement by the liberal ziolobby, which claims legitimacy in the OWS since titularly it opposes the Israeli Occupation (though not the occupation and deprivileging of non-Jews in Israel itself) and so that instant solidarity becomes restricted by zionist-mediated checkpoints of the mind. More chains to break! Not enough people have broken through to the realisation that zionism is fully congruent with imperialism, both utilising the familiar tool of capitalism, both expansionist and colonialist.

Take your goons and bases home, Obama. You aren’t welcome here until you stop using Australia as a projection of US criminal imperialism.

Palestine / Israel Links

Palestinians express solidarity to NYC ‘Occupy’ camp before raid; Activist in tweet controversy linked to Israel PR groups
Palestine solidarity activists in particular (as I can tell you from experience) have all too often been asked to check their politics at the door in various political coalitions in the US, in the interest of not “alienating” the mainstream (if we can speak frankly, this was a major issue in organizing against the Iraq war during the past decade). The recent response of Daniel Sieradski, a driving force between Occupy Judaism, to the controversy over support for Freedom Waves shows that this logic is still, unfortunately, current in parts of the Occupy movement
Defense Minister Ehud Barak is under fire over a comment he made during an interview with PBS’ Charlie Rose on Wednesday. Asked by Rose whether he would strive for nuclear weapons had he been in Iran’s shoes, Barak said, “Probably…I don’t delude myself that they are doing it just because of Israel .”

Other Links

Dennis Ross: The Undiplomatic History
Joseph Massad: The Syrian people are being sacrificed at the altar of US imperialism
Roy demands end to Indian occupation of Kashmir

‘”While India brutalises Kashmir in so many ways, that occupation brutalises the Indians.

It (the occupation) turns us into a people who are able to bear a kind of morally reprehensible behaviour done in our name, and the fact that so few Indians will stand up and say anything about it is such a sad thing.”‘

Infinite Parallel Universes

Blessed with a mother who was an astronomer, I was introduced to the marvellous concept of infinity when very young. ‘Somewhere, there’s someone just like you saying everything you say up to this point in your life, but their next word will be different’, she imagined, and I imagined along with her, determined to trick those mischievous doppelgangers by choosing a random next word. The illusion of self is such that one can escape those paradoxes. Possessed of an eidetic memory and feyness inherited from my scottish grandmothers, I could relate with exactitude future events to an extent which alarmed my scientist parents.

Whilst immersed in a mosaic of Douglas Hofstader and Martin Gardner’s fascinating games in Scientific American, fractals and the mathematical art of Escher, I loved to contemplate the impossible, which felt imminently possible through acts of creation – music, poetry, literature, art and maths – and existential dreams. I longed to discover how inexplicable events occurring to me could be explained through the existence of parallel universes, where future events somehow leaked through to me. Altered states seemed mundane – where was the explanation for my very real experiences?

When brane theory emerged, I was ecstatic – here at last might be an answer to the peculiar prophecies which infest my existence. For the next challenge is how to vacate to another, better universe, where human rights and the environment are respected, where capitalism is regarded as a wrong turn and imperialism, exploitation and racism are regarded with the contempt they deserve and have been eradicated. Does one have to displace a gestalt me to do it? or can I rescue all my associated ‘selves’? If all universes are infinitely close to each other, the jump to my/our preferred destination might be infinitely close.

Here’s the poem I wrote for my mother.

The Physicist’s Dream

Elusive electron, quantum leap,
For I have only six hours to sleep,
Be improbable as quick as you can –
To the outer shell and back again.

Let’s fly on a fabulous photon trip,
To the edge of this universe we’ll joyfully slip,
On a heady black hole chase
Through the spires of hyper-space.

Tachyon, tachon, take me away
On a cosmic caravanserai,
And if we leave before the dawn,
We’ll be home by yesterday’s morn.

Related Links

Parallel Universes BBC transcript

Palestine / Israel Links

Dame Kiri asked to boycott Israel
Tunisia condemns Israeli calls for Jews to emigrate : denounces ‘ill-disposed’ call, which it warns amount to ‘meddling’ in Tunisia’s domestic affairs.
Kiri Te Kanawa asked to campaign against Israeli apartheid
UK: Festival rejects grant amid threats from anti-Israel groups
1 Apr, MELBOURNE: ISRAELI APARTHEID WEEK – Boycott Jericho Action
Another intensive bout of genocide against Palestinians coming up? Israel eases steps to revoke citizenship
‘Quartet ‘parameters’ must address our needs’
Israel threatens to take action if UN recognizes Palestinian statehood
The single demand that can unite the Palestinian people
Gaza health ministry devises ‘emergency plan’ to counter Israeli provocations
10 days after Itamar murders, 100 residents of neighboring Awarta remain in jail. 60 arrested last night
Poll: Nearly 50% of Hispanic Americans believe U.S. too supportive of Israel

Strangely, the press release announcing the survey made no mention of appraising the existence of anti-Hispanic sentiment in the Jewish community. But 54% of American Jews surveyed reported that they support new anti-immigration laws passed in the U.S. state of Arizona, which are widely considered to be anti-Hispanic in nature.

Illegal Arrests by Israeli Army in South Hebron Hills
David Cronin: Israeli Apartheid & Beyond.
Rogue State: Israeli Violations of U.N. Security Council Resolutions
How the 2008/09 Gaza “war” should’ve happened
28 March ’11: B’Tselem Announces Formation of Public Council of Prominent Figures from Israeli Public, Intellectual, and Cultural Life :

A struggle is being waged in Israeli society over commitment to human dignity – whether it should be to the dignity of every person or to the dignity of Jews alone. In this struggle, it is imperative to stand with those who protect human dignity as a universal value.

Beit Ommar blockaded after settler attacks : The apartheid entity outsources its terror and land theft programme to its illegal ziocolonists.
McGill should cut ties with the Hebrew University : ‘The University itself has expanded onto occupied land in East Jerusalem and provided scholarships for those who participated in Operation Defensive Shield during the Second Intifada in 2002. The University also removed South African judge Richard Goldstone as an honorary member of its Board of Governors in 2010 after the release of his UN report, which found the Israeli military’s actions in Gaza during Operation Cast Lead in violation of international law. In a direct tie with the Israel Defence Force, the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus includes a military base on its land.’
Haneen Zoabi : “Any racist law will succeed within this Zionist and right-wing Knesset. Any law which any fool or any crazy or any hysterical and racist person could imagine, anything, he can pass it within this racist Knesset’.
Homes destroyed by Israeli Army in Amnyir, South Hebron Hills
More citizens of Awarta arrested in night raid
Seven Injured, 12 Huts Destroyed as Troops Attack Hebron Hills Village
The ‘Judaization’ of Palestine – Occupation, Theft and Racism Re-defined! – it’s apartheid!
IOF assaults six senior citizens during demolitions east of Yatta, raids Gaza
Israeli parliament passes citizenship/loyalty law
Interview: Mapping the disappearance of a nation
Palestinian ‘abducted’ in Ukraine due in Israel court
ATLAS OF THE CONFLICT : Israel – Palestine
Israel passes law revoking citizenship for spying : Lieberman: “Without loyalty, there can be no citizenship.” I have news for you, ziofascist. When government doesn’t serve the people, there is tyranny.

Libya Links

Obama Strongly Defends US Military Action in Libya – well he would, wouldn’t he, with an election coming on.
Tariq Ali : Libya is another case of selective vigilantism by the west

Iraq Links

The Secret Behind the Sanctions: How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq’s Water Supply

Papua New Guinea Links

The Observatory: Indonesia: Brutal attack against journalist Banjir Ambarita

Australia Links

Andrew Bolt offended by lawyer who linked Nazi race laws to his column
The extraordinary assault on Andrew Bolt

Bolt’s articles, Merkel suggested, could lead to genocide. Possibly Merkel didn’t mean genocide in the accurate sense of the term but in the more contemporary sense in which its original connotation of mass murder has been replaced with other, more postmodern forms such as cultural destruction, which has debauched the proper, devastating meaning of the word. But Merkel’s Holocaust reference seemed to suggest he was pretty directly linking Bolt to mass murder.

Andrew Bolt attacks ‘false, offensive’ claims
I will defend to the death Bolt’s right to wallow in the mire
Andrew Bolt on trial: ‘everyone makes mistakes’

After an extended back and forth, Bolt conceded his articles had caused offense to Behrendt: ”If you want me to concede that these articles would offend Ms Behrendt, then I will concede that.” …
.
The court also heard Bolt’s postmodern take on the idea of race, despite his suggestions in one article that the successful light-skinned Aborgines had chafed with “racial reality”.

“I have problems with the notion of race in that I don’t know that there’s much beyond a human race. I just think it’s a very fluid concept, it means different things to different people,” the Herald Sun associate editor opined.

“The notion of race is difficult and I find it uncomfortable; race was one this drop of blood thing and quadroons and octoroons and all these things that I’ve been accused of saying.” He said he found the concept of race “yuck”.

According to Bolt, “the central concern” of the four articles at the centre of the case was not a denigration of his subjects but a broader issue with “the stressing of race in terms of identity but also of positions of a kind that tends to stress what divides us rather than what unites us as human beings”. ”They hold positions on the public platform or race-based positions, so there are consequences to that … [and that] makes it more a matter of the public interest,” he said.

The Herald Sun scribe would prefer some self-identified Aborigines focus more on their commonalities with others. In one of the articles, Bolt said sartist Bindi Cole has a “distressingly white face”.

NT intervention violates human rights: UN
UN draft UPR recommendations to Australia [pdf] See 86.23=86.26 re racial discrimination. Also see Australia’s voluntary commitments at the end: 88.

88. The delegation took the opportunity to announce a number of new commitments from the Australian Government, including funding for the Office for the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Asia Pacific Forum, the establishment of a full-time Race Discrimination Commissioner at the Australian Human Rights Commission, a commitment to tabling in Parliament concluding observations from treaty bodies and UPR recommendations, and instituting a systematic process for review of Australia’s reservations to human rights treaties.

Know your rights: Racial discrimination and vilification
What is genocide?: Don’t call it ethnic cleansing
Australia PM urged to meet indigenous people
NT elders condemn intervention
Police break Aboriginal picket line